Job Discussion Forums

[KarenB]

Midlothian hit the nail on the head, I think. I interpreted this assignment as an invitation for the students to critique, even criticize their own culture. Chinese students are not encouraged to do this. Rather, the opposite -- they are encouraged to write essays, speeches, etc. lauding their culture and fanning the nationalistic flame. For an example of this mindset, simply scan the articles in China Daily.

Furthermore, as Roger said, this assignment would fly over the head of many Westerners, let alone Chinese students who are NOT taught to think abstractly.

Any Asian mental superiority that exists is left brain: in the realm of mathematics, business, and studies/careers involving memorization. Thus, you will see a number of Asian computer geeks, information technologists, doctors, etc. On IQ tests administered to American children of Asian heritage, the scores are generally lower in verbal and creative categories (right brain).

What's more, even though you're dealing with university students, you've got to remember that English is their second language. Your topic might be appropriate for students in their first language, but a bit heavy for 2nd language learners.

I also don't find your own essay to be a good example. For one thing, your vocabulary was way too high for the intermediate or low advanced English learner (which is where your students probably are). For another, even tho your point was to give 3 examples of misconceptions, your students probably gleaned from your examples that you were (once again) criticizing their culture.

[stillnosheep]

[KarenB]

Another thing that might be confusing your students is your definition of religion. They've probably never heard religion described in such terms before.

When the Chinese think of religion, it's in a more pragmatic, concrete way. They don't give religion much thought until exam time rolls around, and then they might go down to the temple and burn a candle or two. or at New Year they'll honor the ancestors. Religion is pretty much just hedging one's bets and keeping the spirits happy. It has little to do with the cosmos, morality, etc.

In my opinion, you definition of religion is rather jaded. Nevertheless, I doubt it would offend Chinese sensibilities. However, any discussion of religion is somewhat taboo, and to ask them to actually write about it, to document their thoughts on paper, especially write about it in comparison to Chinese culture -- well, quite frankly, they might be afraid of repercussions -- esp. those who are in the process of application with the communist party.

[KarenB]

Your comment that Chinese think they're descended from dragons is not quite correct.

According the mythology, Chinese think they are descended from Nua -- a kind of female Noah figure. Nua and her brother/husband (Fu Xi)survived a great flood in some sort of boat. When the waters receded, they realized they were the only surviving humans, and so they married (even though siblings) and produced the new race of humans. According to some versions of the myth, the human race did not procede directly from this couple, but rather Nua created the human beings out of yellow clay.

In Chinese art, this couple are portrayed with the upper torso of humans and with fishlike (or dragonlike) tails. I think this is more symbolistic of the "coming out of the water" than representative of evolution from amphibians. Also, in many versions of the story, Nua and Fuxi are gods, not humans; they are not the ancestors, but rather the creators of humans. Thus, Chinese wouldn't expect to find dragon DNA in their gene pool.

BTW -- anyone who believes in evolution would expect to find other than human DNA if they went back far enough up the genetic ladder. So no need to ridicule the Chinese anymore than the evolutionist.

[InTime]

RE: China and Technology

http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/shaffer.html

from the World History Bulletin, Fall/Winter, 1986/87

In this text a modern commentator cautions against judging Chinese history by later events in Europe.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an early advocate of file empirical method, upon which the scientific revolution was based, attributed Western Europe's early modern take-off to three things in particular: printing, the compass, and gunpowder. Bacon had no idea where these things had come from, but historians now know that all three were invented in China. Since, unlike Europe, China did not take off onto a path leading from the scientific to the Industrial Revolution, some historians are now asking why these inventions were so revolutionary in Western Europe and, apparently, so unrevolutionary in China.

In fact, the question has been posed by none other than Joseph Needham, the foremost English-language scholar of Chinese science and technology. It is only because of Needham's work that the Western academic community has become aware that until Europe's take-off China was the unrivaled world leader in technological development.

That is why it so disturbing that Needham himself has posed this apparent puzzle. The English-speaking academic world relies upon him and repeats him; soon this question and the vision of China that it implies will become dogma. Traditional China will take on supersociety qualities-able to contain the power of printing, to rein in the potential of the compass, even to muffle the blast of gunpowder.


Needham's question can thus be understood to mean, Why didn't China use gunpowder to destroy feudal walls? Why didn't China use tile compass to cross the Pacific and discover America, or to find an all-sea route to Western Europe? Why didn't China undergo a Renaissance or Reformation? The implication is that even though China possessed these technologies, it did not change much. Essentially Needham's question is asking, What was wrong with China?

Actually, there was nothing wrong with China. China was changed fundamentally by these inventions. But in order to see the changes, one must abandon the search for peculiarly European events in Chinese history, and look instead at China itself before and after these breakthroughs.

...To begin, one should note that China possessed all three of these technologies by the latter part of the Tang dynasty (618-906)-between four and six hundred years before they appeared in Europe. And it was during just that time, from about 850, when the Tang dynasty began to falter, until 960, when the Song dynasty (960-1279) was established, that China underwent fundamental changes in all spheres. In fact, historians are now beginning to use the term revolution when referring to technological and commercial changes that culminated in the Song dynasty, in the same way that they refer to the changes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England as the Industrial Revolution. And the word might well be applied to other sorts of changes in China during this period.

....Gunpowder, printing, the compass - clearly these three inventions changed China as much as they changed Europe. And it should come as no surprise that changes wrought in China between the eighth and tenth centuries were different from changes wrought in Western Europe between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. It would, of course, be unfair and ahistorical to imply that something was wrong with Western Europe because the technologies appeared there late. It is equally unfair to ask why the Chinese did not accidentally bump into the Western Hemisphere while sailing east across the Pacific to find the wool markets of Spain.